Pierre Eugene Du Simitière and The First American National Museum

Abstract

This essay surveys the life and the graphic art of Pierre Eugene Du Simitière, a young citizen of Geneva, a painter, naturalist, and adventurer, who moved to the New World in 1757. Framed within the wider context of the birth of the modern museum, this essay focuses specifically on Du Simitière’s status as a lifelong collector and early scholar of the natural and social life of the American colonies/nation, which led to his production of one of the best libraries on the Continent and to the opening of the first historical national museum in Philadelphia in 1782. A witness to the American Revolution, from which he collected an impressive quantity of printed documents, especially those related to political protest, Du Simitière gradually involved himself in the struggle of the colonies for independence through his artwork and entrepreneurship, and served the Continental Congress in a variety of ways, particularly in the fashioning of the Great Seal of the United States. Author of the first-known Washington profile, Du Simitière was close to many of the major political and military leaders of his time and also with men of science and culture, and was himself a member and curator of the American Philosophical Society.